So, other than DrupalCon Szeged just generally being incredibly awesome (I have to admit that this was my favorite DrupalCon to date), I am particularly excited about the Doc sprint we had on the last day. We had a lot of people show up and we got so much stuff accomplished that it is impossible for me to list it all. My best effort is in a list of the top things that came to mind when I did a Doc team mail list brain dump. I do hope that others at the sprint will share their own experiences and thoughts, either in the comments here or in posts of their own. The biggest bummer for me is that I couldn't really manage to extend to the sprint into the evening which would have made it more possible for folks in the Americas to attend.

Getting work done was only part of the goal for me though. My greater motivation for organizing the sprint was to open the door for more people to get involved and gain confidence in their ability to contribute. We added many new faces to the team on sprint day. I feel like not only do they now have a shiny new edit tab, but that they also have their sea legs under them to strike out and continue docs work with confidence. One common problem for many who are new to the doc team is that after their initial motivation to join, fixing a typo or clarifying a page, they aren't sure what to do next. We have a lot of people who are keenly interested and capable of helping out, but as with many aspects of Drupal and OS communities in general, until you learn the ropes, it can be daunting to pick a place to start or feel that you have the authority to start having an impact.

Part of the success of the sprint was simply having a fair number of people physically there, which made the exchange of information faster and easier, as well being able to literally sit down side by side and show each other how we do things. The ability to bounce ideas around and get answers to questions real-time certainly was exciting as well and was something that happened really well between the people present in the room as well with the folks online, all working together. Another big factor, and one that certainly doesn't require physically proximity, was creating a list of achievable tasks. We had a list of things to accomplish going in to the sprint and the number one item was to create a more enduring list that team members could refer to at any time. We needed to address that "Now what do I do?" problem. In the morning we created a new simple tasks page. Then as new people showed up or came online in IRC, we could direct them to that page so they could dig in quickly. The idea is to provide people with concrete, bite-size tasks that don't necessarily require an investment of hours or days to accomplish and document how to do them so that people can feel self-directed and sure of what they need to do. (We also certainly encourage feedback on that page itself to further that goal. Feel free to join the team and help out!)

Another thing that we've done, based on many conversations both at the sprint and leading up to it, is to create a central place to announce what is going on with Drupal documentation. Most of the team discussions are handled on our mailing list or the issue queue. Many people who may be interested in documentation simply don't take part in these channels of communication. It can be for any number of reasons from simply not knowing about them to hating mail lists and refusing to add more mail to their lives. ;-) The Documentation team group on g.d.o is a read-only list that will aggregate and summarize the doc team activity and provide a handy RSS feed. The idea is that people who would like to stay informed but not necessarily track every single resource out there can stay up to speed and hop in when they feel inspired.

I feel completely energized by everything we did. It was wonderful to spend time with so many awesome people working their butts off and helping each other. It is inspiring to see strangers come together, quickly find ways to blend efforts and get things done. I also feel excited for the future of our documentation and I look forward to being part of such an amazing team and seeing the things we can do. Documentation is entering a phase of strong growth. I can feel it. I believe we can raise the bar for OS documentation. There is a lot to be done but I am so looking forward to the ride.

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